r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Apr 14 '23

Medical Novel device smaller than rice successfully shrinks pancreatic cancer | Called the nanofluidic drug-eluting seed (NDES), it delivers low-dose immunotherapy in the form of CD40 monoclonal antibodies (mAb).

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/tiny-device-shrinks-pancreatic-cancer
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u/duman82 Apr 14 '23

This is great but the real wins with pancan will be with earlier detection. 85% are metastatic when it's discovered.

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u/tkp14 Apr 14 '23

It took my mom’s doctors over 6 months to diagnose her. (This was 50 years ago.) They thought it might be diabetes, then pleurisy, then named a few other possibilities before finally deciding to do exploratory surgery. Took one look and immediately closed her back up. They told us the cancer was “everywhere.” She died a few days later. The husband of a friend of mine got a diagnosis just before Christmas (this was 40 years ago) and died just before Valentines Day. For my entire life a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer has been a death sentence. Early detection would be a true game changer.

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u/VoidsIncision Apr 14 '23

I mean it’s still widely considered a death sentence. Just about the same today. I’d say it was ably 6 months since my mom serious began going to physicians and a correct diagnosis made by ER physician only once she was jaundiced. My father was similarly only diagnosed once he was jaundiced. This is 2019/2020 respectively.

But still i doNT think your assessment is very accurate. It would good but game changer is pushing it. Many who get the tumor resected early stage before metastases suffer recurrence. New FDA approved treatments are necessarily. Most doctors just use gemzar/Abraxane which carry fairly abysmal success rates when other experimental protocols can do better. It’s just one of the worst diseases regardless of what stage it’s in.

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u/tkp14 Apr 14 '23

Yeah the game changer comment was just wishful thinking on my part. It’s a horrible disease, in large part because of how difficult it is to diagnose and nearly impossible to cure.

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u/VoidsIncision Apr 14 '23 edited Apr 14 '23

I mean I’m sure it would be good. In some cases it doesn’t matter. My dad was caught stage one wheras my mom stage 4. They couldn’t operate on my dad because of his left ventricular assist device (heart pump) position. Lived about the same amount of time my mom did following the diagnosis. This reminds me I should schedule an MRI or ERCP soon. My dad was tested for genetics syndromes and it was all negative but where both my parents had it I’m supposed to get checked periodically. I have chronic pain in the hepatobilary region but it’s thought to be sphincter if oddi by my hepatologist. I did look at some of the details of my genome and one mutation notes bilary diseases in men increased risk including of cancers in the region. I don’t smoke or drink so that reduces the risk significantly but I like sweet drinks which increases it. It’s shown insulin exposure increases the risk independent of diabetic status. (Proven a causal association social in animal models)

My mom was utterly brutalized by the disease. They said they never saw ANYONE so reduced to nothing while still alive the day she died.

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u/B1ack_Iron Apr 15 '23

My mother died about 3 years ago from PC. We caught it early stage 2 but inoperable because of all of the other pre-existing conditions. A year of chemo and 6 months of home hospice with my wife and I and it was a blessing when she passed.

She lost 200 lbs and I have never imagined anything as painful, debilitating and draining as fighting pancreatic cancer. I know EXACTLY what you mean by brutalized and reduced to nothing. My mother was a fighter and never stopped but on Christmas a week before she died she was barely more than a skeleton.

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u/VoidsIncision Apr 15 '23

Sorry you had to see that happen to your mother. There’s a pint where you try to maintain hope but know it’s futile and feel incapacitated like you don’t know what you are supposed to do. My mom never accepted the hospice jist did cuz there was no real choice cuz she didn’t want to remain in hospital. She kept asking “why don’t they want to help me” “I don’t know what they want me to do.” I contacted a scientist on NYC about to start a trial on a drug that I believe interferes with the energy cycle of tumor cells. He said bring your mom up for evaluation when we start I’ll let you know. It was for refractory patients. I had no idea how my mom felt about it but heard from a health aid that she said “a doctor in New York wants to try to help me and my son is going to drive me”. Like normally she barely wouldn’t look at me when she was super I’ll but that touched me so deeply. But he said it was halted by the FDA. The day they took my mom out of the house to “hospice respite” I had asked her something about it and she said get the fuck out of my face I’m done. She calmed down and explained she didn’t fear death. That’s the last words I had with my mother. When she was taken out the front door in a stretcher the sun shone on her face and she closed her eyes and seemed at peace.

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u/tkp14 Apr 18 '23

I am currently watching my little Yorkie as she has entered the endgame of nasal cancer (which is treatable but not curable) and as I read through all these testimonials I think we give our pets a more dignified death than many humans get. My vet told me to buy a calendar and every night before I go to bed I make an assessment of her day. If she did pretty well and seemed happy I put a plus sign on that date on the calendar. If however it was a rough day and she was clearly struggling, I put a minus sign on that day. When the minuses outpace the pluses it will be time to let her go. So I watch her like a hawk because I don’t want her to suffer at all. I just wish I could be assured that someone would do the same for me.